


wildfire

by ohadeline



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, I LOVE HURTING MYSELF, sideline ron/hermione, the whole weasley family is included
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 20:19:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7815700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohadeline/pseuds/ohadeline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have so many freckles.”<br/>He chuckles. “So does the half of the other gingers in this house,” his voice is less serious now, with soft edges and tired  confidence. “Go to sleep, Granger.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	wildfire

_ 1 (one) _

 

It happens after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries- or as she likes to put it, after hell breaks loose. She goes to her parent's house for the good part of the summer, and feels herself shiver every time she thinks of the how’s- Harry lying on the ground between dust and glass, Ron’s arms, Tonks being in hospital and  _ Sirius _ . She shivers at the thought of having no control now. Even if she’d think about it for days and nights, she can’t predict what is going to happen next year, or if she will see the next year. She can’t control her thoughts, always going back to the horror in the midst of the supposed warmth of her house, so when Ron sends her an owl inviting her to the Burrow to stay with them for the last few weeks, with some scribbles from Ginny and a product of Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes to test, she starts to pack. She doesn’t test what is claimed to be a hair colour changer, she has seen enough hair colours to know everything would look good on Tonks and not on Hermione _ , thank you very much,  _ and she doesn’t entirely trust the twins with their pranks, not at this stage. Not that she doesn’t know they’re, well, great in terms of managing a joke shop, but she doesn’t know if they were being generous when they sent the sample or if they were simply after another prank.

And she loves her parents, don’t get it all tangled up in there. Them having dinner is one of the things she thought while casting a patronus, but she can’t explain- even if the Hogwarts could, she can’t. She doesn’t know how to tell it all and not sound like crazy, like she was making up a story-  _ I mean, what Hermione? He fell through a veil and just, died?  _ and she feels so out of control that she doesn’t know what to do with the wand that lays next to her bed. Her mother asks Hermione if it is a good idea to have her wand so close, she could use it in an instinct and she shouldn’t get expelled at this point and of course it isn’t a very good idea but it is better than letting some Death Eater blast their door and torture them. No, she didn't learn defensive spells for a whole year in a room that vanishes as soon as the people inside get out, hiding from a torturing inquisitor, for nothing. 

When she arrives at the Burrow, Ginny’s hair is a dusky brown and she wraps her in a hug and Hermione realizes she has missed this so much- Molly prepares the breakfast almost immediately, it is hard to wake Ron up and the house feels rather a bit lonely without the twins there when they are at the stage of moving out and still counting on Molly to stay alive. They pop in and out of the house, the wild green flames or the sound of “pop” being all too familiar now.

Harry arrives a few days later, and Fred and George stop by to stay for the dinner, just like the old days. Losing Sirius and going through what a muggle would call PTSD, Hermione finds Harry sitting on the old couch, in the dark when she gets down to pee. 

“Hey,” she calls, whispers almost, careful to not make any noise. “It’s late.”

Harry nods, and points to the ground with his chin. Ron is sitting on the ground, his red hair all muffled. “Care to share a drink?”

She gasps when she realizes the bottle of firewhiskey in Harry’s hand, and no glasses. The room is dark and she feels like she is suffocating- she knows the meaning of this now, she knows what holds one of them from crying or shouting or breaking something.

“Yeah.”

She drinks.

 

And just like that, she feels something change- things are darker now, she can feel. The days are shorter and the air is grayer, and Fred’s laugh is fainter. She hasn’t been much of a feeler, though, and she tells Ginny that, when she regrets confusing the girl with her own nonsense. It was Harry after all, whose instinct ashamed their so-called logical minds year after year.

She drinks firewhiskey one night, but Ron and Harry are absent now. She can’t breathe, she can’t sleep, she can’t eat. So she does the most out of character thing she has done and accio’s her way to the old bottle, drinks a quarter of it, leaves it on the sink and heads back to her room with a head too dizzy to even think about the question that is how in earth a magical family could have this many stairs. 

“Hey, Granger, care to try one of our hangover remedies?” she hears someone say, and it’s Fred, she guesses from the way he carries himself- well, lets the wall carry him. He is wearing an old t-shirt, probably some Quidditch team’s old logo. Hair toussled up, in a way that somehow differed from the way Ron’s did, because Ron was probably having nightmares and Fred was up thinking about the joke shop, he shifts his weight, now not leaning to anything.

“Night, Fred.”

“Sure thing, I’ll take the blame when Mum finds the bottle. You’re more professional with Harry and Ron around.”

“Yeah, would be good,” she tries to cut it short because her stomach is burning and she feels very much like crying at the unpredictability of it, much like the rest of her life. Might as well puke on Fred and get away with it.

“Anything I can help with?” he asks, more serious this time.

She looks at him then, really looks, and her neck cranes to actually see him, and even with Ron being near his height now it’s different. She hasn’t realized he has had so many freckles, on his left cheekbone, trailing up to his left temple and getting lost behind his ginger hair. Somehow the left side of his face is more crowded with the freckles, she finds it curious. His eyes are soft, she notes, a tone that reminded her of milk swirling in her morning coffee, but not quite. Before she knows, she has raised a hand, her fingertips slowly trailing the freckles. His eyes follow her hand just as hers do, and he looks at her when she speaks in a whisper. “You have so many freckles.”

He chuckles. “So does the half of the other gingers in this house,” his voice is less serious now, with soft edges and tired confidence. “Go to sleep, Granger.”

She looks past him, her hand now on her waist, standing just like Ginny there. She is someone who picks other people’s habits, she thinks, and it sometimes makes her think she has no personality. Then again, she hasn’t had picked Ron and Harry’s laziness, so that’s still some part of her. She sighs, looks at him again before starting to walk, almost dragging herself on the cracking wooden.

“Night, Fred,” she says, her voice now less hollow.

  
  


_ 2 (two) _

 

She decides to stay at the Burrow for two nights after Dumbledore’s funeral before going to her parent’s house, trying to trace how the Burrow became a constant in her life while her parents were not. She wants to cry at the thought of everything crumbling around them. She won’t be going back to Hogwarts this year, she has fought with goddamn Death Eaters at  _ Hogwarts  _ of all places, Dumbledore is gone, Harry is breaking down and she can see it and Ginny actually has nightmares, and she starts to write to Neville more often- not that they weren’t friends before DA, or before Dumbledore, or before battle at the ministry, and not that they hadn’t sent letters before- but it is strange and only now it sinks into her that he is and will be a constant part of it, as Ginny is or Luna, come to think of it, Luna of all people, is. She responds to his rants about that plant or this flower, but his letters feel less genuine than hers if it is possible- there is something heavy that hangs around Ron, Harry and Hermione, and her attempts to bring some light into her life by talking mindlessly about plants is apparently also clouded by that heaviness. And she cringes at the thought, once again, that these people know things about her that her parents don’t. That she missed a spell invented to torture people less than a month back, for example. She makes a mental note to learn from Harry how to make the perfect Felix Felicis.

She finishes the letter, possibly her last letter before the end of summer to Neville, and pats Errol on his head, and mumbles a thanks to him before the owl takes off,  _ tries to take off,  _ hitting the windowsill. 

“Hermione, dear, I will prepare the dinner in a few minutes, would you help? Ginny, get down here!” 

Molly’s voice shakes her and she makes her way from the couch to the kitchen. Fred is leaning to the counter, Molly dancing around him with some vegetable she can’t name flying around. She hears Ginny’s fast footsteps. The footsteps stop, not continuing over to the middle of the mess that is magic and food. 

“Hey, Hermione, will you take all of your books with you? I am thinking maybe you should leave some here, if you won’t read them.”

She nods and manages a smile. “Sure, just pick the ones you’d like. My mum will pester me into muggle literature anyway.” 

“Not that she reads about Quidditch, Gin,” they hear Ron talk back from the garden, fighting gnomes.

Ginny grins back, now walking to help her mother. “You haven’t packed everything yet?” Fred asks, playing with some cherries on tip of his wand, eating one every once in a while.

“Most of the stuff,” she answers shortly.

“When will you leave?”

Ginny answers for her, Hermione too busy with plates on her hand. “Tomorrow morning, because she is a cow.”

“Oi, Ginny,” Molly elbows the young witch, passing the bowl of salad. “George, Ron, dinner!”

“I’ll get Harry,” Hermione says, when all the others sit down to eat, leaving a frustrated Molly. 

“And Arthur, please, Hermione dear.”

She nods, making her way to the upstairs, where Harry has spent his days brooding and sleeping. A sound of shuffling startles her, jumping to see what it is.

“Oh, Fred, hey.”

He shrugs, his wand and cherries nowhere to be seen. “You have a minute?”

She suspects the motive first, but hears George and Ron push each other over food. “Sure.”

He closes the distance between them that is a few stairs, looking back to see no one coming from the kitchen. He breathes out, his usual grin a bit paler. “I want to do something now, if you let me.”

She raises one brow- “Not a prank, please. I am not sure I am emotionally available after all that happened. Is happening.”

He chuckles, leaning closer, almost trapping her with his arm streched out to get support from the wall. Freckle upon freckle upon freckle upon his white arm. “This is certainly not a prank.” 

She feels the ghost of a few words she prepares herself to mumble but his breath hovers over her lips and his gaze is on  _ them,  _ and it surely is a prank. 

“Is it okay?” he asks, out of character for Fred. She has always thought kissing a Weasley, not this one maybe but any of them, would be like wildfire. She finds herself staring into his eyes- a soft brown, coffee with milk, but very little milk, just like the way her mother makes it, wooden chairs in the kitchen, the fireplace at the common room, and freckle upon freckle upon freckle sprawled over his nose but only faintly, so faintly that she sees them only now, while she is nodding slowly. “Okay,” she answers.

His breath lingers over her lips once again, cherry, mint, soap- and he kisses her, just a wind over her lips, really and she closes her eyes, and his nose brushes hers as he presses further, his hand somehow finding its way to her own hand, which ridiculously is placed on his chest now, and she has no idea how she has managed to do that and then it’s over. He pulls back, a mischievous grin back. “Not a prank, not at all,” he mumbles and goes back downstairs.

  
  


_ 3 (three) _

 

“Ginny, I will tell you something,” she whispers as the Weird Sisters poster moves with the wind coming from the half open window. It is chilly now, towards August. Ginny hums.

“I’ve been snogging Fred.”

“You have been what!” Ginny jolts from the bed where her legs and arms is dangling over all the edges, not wearing pants because she is always too hot.

“Hush, you will wake someone.”

“Hermione, do you have any idea what you just said? You said Fred, not Ron, not Harry- it’d be predictable if it were Ron or Harry. Or Ron  _ and  _ Harry, to be honest but- Fred.”

Hermione takes a quick breath at the suggestion of the sentence, her oxygen getting stuck in her throat. Thanks, Ginny. May as well be the devil with that red hair. Then again, so may Fred. Or Ron.

She shuffles in the bed, turning her eyes from the ceiling to the window and dark night sky. “It has happened only four or five times now- and it’s not really a regular thing, really, I just, well.”

“Merlin,” Ginny breathes out and then laughs. “And I was so worried you would go breaking yourself over Ron.”

Hermione looks at the window more attentively now, though Ginny doesn’t see it. She feels herself breaking, actually. Ginny lays back. “What do you feel?” she turns to left side of her bed, facing the door. “Like, is it just some snogging to get your hormones calm down? Or are you two actually dating or something? Merlin, Merlin. Who knows, just me? If George did, he would be joking now, I suppose. Does George know?”

Hermione shrugs, not caring if Ginny can see the motion. “I don’t know. I just told you so you wouldn’t be surprised catching us.”

“You will tell others, too, then so as not to surprise them?”

“No, you almost walked in on us three times. I have a feeling you will get past the almost stage.”

Ginny chuckles again, a chuckle very similar to that of Fred’s, or George’s. Not Ron’s- she knows his laugh far too well to get it mixed with other people, not even his siblings. She also knows Fred’s laughter lines, two neat lines near his lips and she knows she has traced them, and kissed them, and whispered something about it being just in character, and she knows Fred has sighed at that. Not at her nerdy comment about a prankster having laughter lines and probably crow’s foot at a young age, but at her lips and fingers. 

“What about Ron?”

Hermione changes her view, trying to see the redhead, only catching a glimpse of her feet. “What about him?” she sounds so careless she can’t believe herself. As if she hasn’t cried over him.

“You love him?”

“I do, I suppose.” Another secret out. “He doesn’t love me though, so I see no point refraining myself from trying out every available sibling of his, including you.”

“I think he does, just, he doesn’t know it,” she suggests. “Didn’t he mumble your name while poisoned?”

“He did,” she responds but stops. “I don’t know what that means.”

Ginny snorts, and a silence falls over them. “Okay. Okay, then,” she says and she can hear her smile. “I am glad you told me. I feel like we just deepened our friendship.”

“I feel like we deepened our friendship when we had to sleep in the same bed yesterday.”

“No, that will be when Fleur is locked here after Mum finds out she spends the nights at Bill’s room. We will sleep in the same bed,  _ and  _ share our hatred for Fleur.”

Hermione laughs then, and feels the weight leave her chest. God, she could change her last name to Weasley and be an adopted daughter to Molly and Arthur at this instant with the love she bears to the girl. She isn’t responsible of the Granger name, now, is she, after what she has done?

She trembles. She shouldn’t have gone to that territory.

 

_ 4 (four) _

 

“We have a wedding, you know. I hope you won’t be around with whatever it is you are wearing tomorrow at this hour.” Fred’s voice fills the empty hallway while she is about to enter the room she shares with Ginny. She is wearing pajamas still and it is past noon, the sounds of the Weasley and Delacour families arguing about the garden overwhelmingly loud.

She hums before diving back to the messy room and jumping over Fleur’s things on her way. She grabs another bobby pin, returning to the bathroom. She hates how her hair has decided not to cooperate. She won’t let it happen tomorrow, she  _ will  _ tame it. 

“Shouldn’t you be helping outside?” she asks, with a few bobby pins between her teeth. “I have a feeling people will be shouting at you later.”

Fred shrugs, his grin in his place. “I’ll pass the next few dinners and Mum will forget. Start fretting about me not eating.”

She smiles, as much as she can with her mouth full. “You look good. I’d like to remind you that dinner with French is not an excuse to dress like it’s Yule Ball,” she says, her attention still on the mirror. “And this mirror is driving me crazy- who keeps touching it?”

Fred chuckles. “Is my hair okay, from behind?” she asks and he moves a few steps from the threshold to the inside of the bathroom. “Looks good to me.”

“Okay, thanks,” she fixes another curl falling to her forehead and then turns to Fred, leaning to the sink. She smiles. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he answers, returning the smile with his hands moving to the two sides of her, placing them on the sink. “How’re you?” he mumbles before leaning to leave a peck on her lips.

“Fine,” she responds. “You?”

“Still have laughter lines.”

Hermione smiles again. “Trying to get me some of them as well?” she asks. 

“Possible,” he says, with a lazy shrug, and kisses her cheek, just the corner of her lips. And then her chin, and her cheek and her brow. “What is going on?” he asks, almost in a whisper. His cheek is lightly pressed to hers, his voice tickling her ear.

Her hands are fiddling with the lace going around her waist. “I have packed.”

He backs away a bit, his cheek leaving hers, to study her face. “Why?”

“I think I might need to leave- we might.”

Fred’s one hand from the sink leaves where it feels like it belongs forever, warmth deserting her left side with both his cheek and arm gone. He brings out his thumb to smooth her frown. “You’ll get wrinkles,” he mumbles. “Say goodbye before you leave?”

Hermione nods. After someone does shout his name from the garden, he kisses where he had smoothed her frown and leaves. Ginny’s head flies out from her bedroom, a grin on her face. Hermione hates Weasleys’ grins. “Not a regular thing, eh?”

 

_ 5 (five) _

 

She doesn’t get to say goodbye. Ron and Harry crush into her and she apparates to wherever comes to her mind, her heart still in her throat, in a worse way than it did during her talk with Ginny or when she saw Lavender with Ron. She doesn’t care that she didn’t get to say goodbye. Who is he, anyway? Some guy, a boy with all those childish jokes, who also knows she obliviated her parents. Ron and Harry know, she supposes, but no one else. Not Ginny. Not George or Bill or Charlie, but Fred. Because he happened to be awake while she was crying her heart out. She takes her mind from the whole night and the garden where she clinged to the smell of firewhiskey that came from his breath. He is just Fred, no one that she should say goodbye.

They race through the streets and get attacked and set up a tent and Ron leaves and crushes her heart and Harry stays up all night looking at the Marauders’ Map and she is left with nothing but the inevitable realization that they are out of Weasleys now. She wants Ron to be back so much that she isn’t sure she can function without him, but apparently they do and they get hungry and they need to leave and Fred keeps popping up in her dreams. Ron is still not back. A part of her knows he knows. One: that he is in fault and should be back. Two: she has a thing going on with Fred.

In dreams, he kisses her, nothing more. Dreams are much faster though, nothing like them lingering over each others’ faces, his calloused fingers tracing her jawline, her hairline, her nose, her lips and her own fingers counting freckles. She dreams of them, too. On his arm, on his nose, on his temple, freckle upon freckle upon freckle upon freckle until her finger reaches to his eye and he warns her not to take out his eye.  _ “Have enough accidents at the shop, love.”  _ Freckle upon freckle upon her own dark skin and her hand smashed between them still holding onto his chest, where his heartbeat is, and lips and hands and freckle upon freckle upon freckle. And he doesn’t even have that many of them. Charlie is more red than white, for example. As is Ginny. She doesn’t think about him if she can help it. She doesn’t think about Ron, too. Ron stings more, somehow. Maybe being away from Fred is more about being on the verge of war. She feels the hair on her head turn to bees whenever she thinks of Ron. He is her best friend, Harry’s, too. Even more Harry’s than hers- it stings. It hurts. She still wakes up in horror when she dreams of a splinched Ron.

She hears Fred’s voice when Ron gets back with the magic that lets them listen to Potterwatch. Her breath gets stuck in her throat, almost like a hiccup and it lasts no time. His voice is just as hearty, just as warm and she wants nothing but to listen to it. It is impossible and it lasts no time. She has control now, unlike that blurry summer after Battle of the Department of Mysteries. They have Horcruxes to hunt. Then happens Bellatrix and the Gringotts and Shell Cottage and Fleur is so kind she feels ashamed she laughed at Ginny’s imitations. 

 

_ 6 (six) _

 

He doesn’t get to say goodbye.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am so sorry.  
> It shouldn't have ended this way but I am a hopeless sucker for stories that tear a hole in my heart. Just so happens I got my hands on these two. I've read a brilliant FredxHermione story recently, got inspired and wrote even though I have this guilt whenever I consider Hermione with someone other than Ron, you know? But I liked this and I have a Gryffindor side that sends out stories as soon as I write them with no waiting for them to settle. So here we go.  
> Don't worry, I know it sucks.


End file.
